Evaluation of police and fire reform year 4: international perspectives

10 Prevention work and the fire services

Key findings: Prevention

• Prevention is viewed as an important part of the firefighter role in each of the fire services in the four international case studies. Fire prevention activities focus on building inspections, fire safety checks in homes, school visits and open days at the fire stations.
• Prevention in some areas has moved beyond the role of fire prevention and into the area of safety and wellbeing, particularly for vulnerable groups, such as the elderly or those with reduced mobility.
• Working in partnership for prevention activities was a feature in all of the four fire services participating in this research. This included working with communities as well as other public and voluntary sector agencies.
• The ability of firefighters to include more prevention work in their role has in part been made possible by the opportunity that has been presented to them by the reduction in the number of domestic fires that they attend.

One of the challenges associated with preventative duties is that not all existing firefighters wish to take on these new roles or feel that they have the skills, or experience, to do so. For newer recruits, however, this is now a more explicit requirement of the role.

The focus of this chapter is the approach taken to prevention in the four international case study areas; West Midlands, Netherlands, Alberta, and New Zealand. 

This includes a discussion on:

• the range of prevention activities undertaken by the fire services
• changes in how the fire services worked in relation to prevention 
• how the fire services worked in partnership
• the challenges and opportunities associated with working to a prevention agenda.

10.1 What are the different types of prevention activities?

Prevention is viewed as an important part of the firefighter role in each of the case study areas. Many of the prevention activities described in each case study area focus on inspections of buildings both commercial and domestic to prevent fires, with the Netherlands and New Zealand focusing their prevention solely on fire safety, whereas Alberta and West Midlands have expanded their role to non-fire related prevention activities. 

10.1.1 Fire prevention activities

Fire prevention activities focus on building inspections, fire safety checks in homes, school visits and open days at the fire stations. 

In New Zealand the home visits are specifically targeted at vulnerable community members who are deemed to be most at risk. In both New Zealand and Alberta, they have a specialised team focusing on prevention. In New Zealand, the Risk Reduction Team focus on fire inspection activities including examining data to establish most at-risk groups requiring home fire safety visits. It is the full-time firefighters who then conduct the home fire safety visits. Their schools programme is delivered by the schools with resources provided by the fire service, but they can request a firefighter visit at the end of the course.

“And then at the end of the program they have the opportunity to request a firefighter visit and they will kind of bring the truck in and the firefighter will come and talk to the children and they just reinforce the messaging. We’ve tried very hard to get the schools to take responsibility for it and in fact the firefighter visit is just the icing on the cake…the kids love the firefighter visits.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

In Canada, prevention is a specialised role with Fire Prevention Officers based in the Fire Prevention and Public Education department carrying out prevention activities. These officers are involved in building inspections as well as public education with ‘at-risk’ groups and running school programmes. 

Case study 8

Utilisation of virtual reality to aid prevention

As part of their prevention strategy, New Zealand fire service has developed technological interventions to improve fire safety in the home.

A tool called ‘Escape My House’ is available online and can be downloaded by the public to provide fire safety advice. You can also take part in a virtual reality programme which simulates a house fire which people need to escape. It aims to develop understanding of how quickly a house can fill with smoke, how disorientating this can be and the need to develop and practice an escape plan and problem solve how to deal with obstructions. This tool was developed with young people in mind to help engage them as part of a broader strategy of targeted interventions and utilising different modes of engagement.

10.1.2 Moving beyond fire prevention

Prevention in some areas has moved beyond the role of fire prevention and into the area of safety and wellbeing. In Alberta, they have introduced speaking to the community about non-fire related prevention, such as drink driving. 

The primary focus of prevention activities in the West Midlands are home visits which are now called Safe and Well Checks, having evolved from ‘home fire risk assessments’ over time (see Section 9.1.3). This evolution marks a change in the prevention role from fire safety to a wider safety agenda, where the fire service work with partners to examine vulnerability and ask questions on behalf of other agencies about, for example, their health, as long as they feel that these health factors are linked to an increased vulnerability from fire. West Midlands fire service have introduced ‘Vulnerable Person’s Officers’ to carry out these checks and they have data sharing agreements with partners, making it clear to the home owner who the data will be shared with. 

“So why that is significant is we've moved well beyond asking the fundamental questions of “Do you have working smoke detectors? Do you smoke? Do you have a night time fire escape routine?...” We still ask those questions, but … they're supplemented with behavioural type questions as well…so if health-related factors that might make them more vulnerable…So we’ll also ask questions now on behalf of other agencies as long as we can, through our risk assessment, link them back to vulnerability from fire and other emergencies in their home.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

There has also been an identified shift towards targeting vulnerable groups in the community in the West Midlands. Through the use of shared data and better intelligence, the service is viewed by one interviewee as feeling more confident in identifying vulnerability and targeting those individuals for prevention-based services. Different factors which are taken into account included smoking, age, mobility, employment status and social demographic status.

Part of the reason for fire officers taking on this role is that it is identified that sometimes only firefighters can access vulnerable people in their homes and as such they are in a good position to signpost them to other agencies. 

“We often find that we're easier – an easier agency to get through the door – and we use that to go and talk to these individuals, understand their problems, and try and help them work those out, or refer them, where appropriate and needed, on to other agencies.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

Case study 9

Targeting prevention work

In Alberta, the fire service works in partnership to deliver “Safety City”. This is an initiative designed to engage children in safety messages. Safety City is a miniature city with buildings that look like garages, supermarkets etc. and the children are provided with inputs on bicycle safety, car safety, how to cross the road safely, home fire safety etc. 

In the Netherlands the fire service organise ‘safety expeditions’ in hospitals and care homes for the elderly . They ensure that the building complies with fire regulations and work with the personnel such as nurses to examine the fire risks and what improvements can be made. This represents a change in practice, as previously they would work only with management in the hospitals, whereas now they are ensuring all staff are aware of fire safety.

10.2 How has the role of the firefighter widened?

10.2.1 Reduction in fires

The ability of firefighters to include more prevention work in their role has in part been made possible by the opportunity that has been presented to them by the reduction in the number of fires that they have to attend (see Chapter 7 for further details on the changing role of the firefighter). This was particularly mentioned by an interviewee from New Zealand, but also reflects the experience of firefighters in Scotland,^[23] where the number of fires has reduced by over 40 percentage points in the past ten years (between 2007-08 and 2017-18).^[24] 

10.2.2 Moving from response to prevention

In New Zealand and the West Midlands, the shift from being response-focused to having both a response and prevention role has been set out in legislation. New Zealand has introduced a new Act, in which prevention and risk reduction is a key part. The Act outlines that the service is not just for response but needs to take a preventative role.^[25]

“In our Act and it talks about how we are not just a response organisation, we are you know…there to think about how do we actually stop these events from happening in the first place.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

West Midlands feel they have developed a more ‘sophisticated’ understanding of the impact of prevention in the last 15 years. It is outlined that they have a statutory duty to enforce the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005^[26] which includes applying the principles of prevention. One of the interviewees explained that over time they have developed prevention practices, which started as simply fitting smoke alarms in homes and then supplementing that activity with providing advice. They found that the advice led to behavioural change and the introduction of safer practices being put in place, which in turn reduced the number of fire incidents and the number of injuries. 

“The smoke alarm fitting didn’t reduce any incidents. It just provided an earlier warning which meant incidents potentially could be less significant – so, less injury, less damage. The advice part started to focus on helping people change their habits to make them less likely to have incidents.” (Interviewee: West Midlands) 

In the Netherlands, prevention has become more of a priority since the early 2000s after several big incidents where there were several victims, leading to a shift from response to prevention. This led to each fire department having its own prevention section. 

In Alberta, interviewees described having had a prevention agenda for decades, so rather than describing a move from response to prevention, they are now expanding the role to include taking part in more community events to share fire safety messages.

10.3 What role does partnership working have in developing effective prevention strategies?

Working in partnership for prevention activities was a feature in all the case study areas, even where the focus of the prevention work was fire safety. Partnership working is seen by some interviewees as an essential part of successful prevention initiatives. 

10.3.1 Partnership working essential for prevention activities

In the Netherlands they explained that they work with many partners including public servants, healthcare organisations, insurance companies, building companies, police, rail organisations and schools to deliver the fire safety messages. This range of partners is also reflected in the other international case studies. 

As described previously, in the West Midlands the fire service is now conducting ‘Safe and Well’ checks in homes (see Section 9.1.3). Key to this approach is partnership working where the Service has data sharing agreements with partners. They are working to a ‘making every contact count’ agenda, in which they have a target of 50% of their ‘Safe and Well’ checks being identified through partnership referrals. 

“We started doing, you know, safety checks, and knocking on people’s doors, you know, 10 years ago, whereas, now, we know that the most vulnerable would have been seen by another partner, and so therefore we seek to have partnership referrals rather than finding them ourselves.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

There appears to be an understanding in the West Midlands and New Zealand that partners are essential for prevention and targeting identified vulnerable community members. For example, in New Zealand, firefighters set up a stall at Age Concern events which target 70 years plus. This is a means of engaging with an older age group deemed to be more vulnerable, in order to arrange home fire safety visits. In New Zealand it is also explained that they tend to work in partnership for many parts of their role, however, in prevention they do not take the lead, but instead work in collaboration with partners. 

10.3.2 Working with the local community essential for prevention activities

In the Netherlands and New Zealand, the importance of working with the local community to effectively deliver prevention work was discussed. In the Netherlands groups within the community have been identified to undertake tailored education and prevention work. In addition, in the Netherlands and New Zealand a programme of activity to build community assets to enable communities to do more fire prevention in the home themselves has been implemented. There is a view that without a good relationship with communities, this fire prevention work could not happen.

“I think [in] the past we were seen as the hero, and we’d respond to everything and anything. And the space we started to move into strategically is around community resilience and communities being able to support themselves…and understand that we won’t necessarily be…in major events we won’t be able to get to them so how do they prepare themselves? So we’re moving to more that…yeah empowering our communities, versus being there for everything all the time.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

10.4 What challenges and opportunities are there in working to a prevention agenda?

10.4.1 Evaluating the effectiveness of prevention activities 

One of the identified challenges was how to evaluate prevention activities in order to show that they are effective. Evidence from Scotland on prevention activities, from the third year of the evaluation, showed that for both the police and fire services, the importance of being able to evaluate prevention programmes was recognised but there was a lack of knowledge and skills on how evaluation works and no systematic, independent evaluation process of prevention activities in place.^[27] Similar challenges are faced in all the international case study areas.

In the West Midlands, as in the other case study areas, prevention is viewed as being an important part of the future firefighter role including targeting vulnerable community members. However, the West Midlands’ interviewees have also identified a difficulty in evaluating prevention activities and then explaining their value to the UK Government.

“Prevention is absolutely the way forward effectively….we recognise the importance of ensuring that we can get out to those communities at the early stages – so targeting those groups or individuals to ensure that we can work with them to prevent what comes later on down the line…What we find hard is the evaluation of our activities to support that, and then support that story at Government level. That is difficult for us.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

The evaluation of prevention activities can also focus on measurement of the number of activities and the number of people who have been part of a prevention programme, rather than focusing on the impact of the intervention. For example, in New Zealand, it was explained that the prevention activities in schools are measured by how many children have taken part rather than the impact and effectiveness of the programme. The schools programme has been developed by the fire service but is run by the teachers and they are now planning to adopt a new way of evaluating the programme by capturing the teacher’s perspective to try and understand who uses the programme, who is not accessing it and how it could be improved. 

10.4.2 Who should take on the prevention role? 

An issue identified in New Zealand, is who should be taking on the prevention role. It is a challenge sparing operational firefighters from operational duties, but they are questioning how much they can ask of their volunteers. This is something they say they will be addressing in the near future, with a suggestion from one interviewee that they could create a new volunteer role who serves as a Community Safety Officer, a role entirely dedicated to prevention work. This however, raises questions regarding training and remuneration for this role given the lack of funding for prevention compared to frontline provision 

In Alberta securing funding for prevention ‘…these kind of back of house if you will programmes’ (Interviewee: Alberta) can be challenging as most of the funding which comes to the fire service is allocated to frontline firefighters. 

10.4.3 The need for a different skillset for firefighters 

One of the challenges associated with moving from a purely response role to one that includes preventative duties is that not all firefighters wish to take on these new roles or feel that they have the skills or experience to do so. This is also described as an issue in relation to recruiting new firefighters. In Alberta, it was stated that advertisements for new recruits show firefighters running into burning buildings despite this being less than 10% of their role. When one interviewee asked classes of new recruits if they would have applied for community safety officer posts, he states that less than 10% said they would. This led to an explanation in the class that community safety and prevention is the biggest part of the firefighter role, with the interviewee explaining that a change in mind-set is required about what they are doing with prevention and why they’re doing it.

However, a further view from Alberta is that there is now a newer generation of firefighters coming into the service who are seen as being more open to a wider role in the community and as such the mind-set in the service seems to be changing which opens up more opportunities for prevention work. 

“As the service gets younger and we have our turnover, you have more of the millennials, and newer generation who understand more those social, environmental causes and have their philosophies on that as opposed to some of the older school firefighters who were there just to run into a burning building. So I think some of the mind-set is changing.” (Interviewee: Alberta)